OASIS announced yesterday the creation of a technical committee to develop a core reference model for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). To quote their goal:
The SOA reference model will offer an understanding of the core elements within a service oriented environment and the associations and relationships among those elements. The reference model itself will not be directly tied to any standards, technologies or other concrete implementation details. Rather, it will be an abstract, designed to be used as a tool by software and enterprise architects developing specific SOAs.
The end-user organizations seem to be strongly behind this, given the participation of Boeing, General Motors, Lockheed Martin, Mitre, VISA, USA’s Department of Homeland Security, Japan’s Electronic Commerce Promotion Council, and Canada’s Public Works and Government Services. However, The Register reports today that some of the biggest names in enterprise computing have not yet hopped on board: Microsoft and Oracle, to name two. Shame, shame; you guys aren’t planning to go the proprietary route, are you?